MEXICO'S DANCING AMBASSADORS BRING ANNIVERSARY TOUR TO CHICAGO

When the Ballet Folklorico de Mexico first performed in Chicago in 1959 for the Pan American Games, it garnered excellent reviews in the newspapers and was featured with a photo in Life magazine.

And all the attention inspired then-Mexican President Lopez Mateos to offer support so that the ballet's founder, Amalia Hernandez, could create for her country "one of the best ballets in the world."

The ballet returns to Chicago's Auditorium Theatre Friday for four weekend performances that are part of its 45th Anniversary World Tour. Now, of course, it is a world-renowned company of 65 dancers and musicians who provide a history lesson dressed up in elaborate costumes, dazzling choreography and exuberant theatricality.

Hernandez, who has been compared to Igor Moiseyev, Russia's famed folk choreographer and impresario, says that Chicago holds a special place in her heart. "It's the place that led the president of Mexico to give us special attention," she said this week over the telephone from Mexico City.

Hernandez, who recently turned 80, founded the ballet in 1952. As a dancer and teacher she wanted to marry dancers trained in classical ballet technique with the rich dances, rituals and music of the small towns, rural communities and churches deep in Mexico where very distinct cultures persist even as the rest of the world becomes ever more homogenized through technology.

"The first dances I saw were in the little towns of Mexico as a child on vacation with my parents," Hernandez recalls. "And then I saw classical ballet in the National Theatre in Mexico. I saw all the Russian companies that I could. One of them that impressed me very much was Moiseyev, and I thought the same thing could be done with Mexican dance. To add vitality and perfectionism and the techniques of theater with scenery and music and choreography."

For this year's anniversary season, the selection of dances will include the U.S. premiere of "Guelaguetza," a work featuring offerings from the seven regions of Oaxaca. It will include the Feather Dance from the Zapoteca region, performed by men, and the Jarabes from the Mixteca culture, performed by women.

Since she was 8, Hernandez, the daughter of a wealthy rancher and politician, wanted to devote her life to dance.

"I liked dance very much in school and then later I started classical ballet with special classes at home (in a private studio built by her father, who brought dancers from Anna Pavlova's company and the Paris Opera to teach her).

"My mother liked very much for me to dance. I just have danced all my life. I never really made any decisions. I just went step by step since I was 8 years old."

While working as a modern dance teacher and choreographer at Mexico's Institute of Fine Arts, Hernandez left to form her own dance company in 1952. She joined forces with Emilio Azcarraga, director of the Mexican television network, and began to present a series of dance programs with eight young dancers. Two years later, the department of tourism made her company the official cultural ambassador of Mexico.

When the Mexican government named the ballet company the resident dance company of the Palace of Fine Arts in Mexico City after the Pan American Games, Hernandez was free to spread her wings. She has choreographed dozens of ballets drawn from more than 60 regions of Mexico and has won more than 100 decorations and awards from Mexico and around the world.

Today there are two dance companies, a resident troupe that performs year-round in Mexico City and a touring troupe that travels around the world.

Adam Friedson, the ballet's producer, says that Hernandez continues to document local Mexican rituals, dances and music in an effort to infuse the ballet's choreography work "with the entire cultural inheritance."

"When she goes into local communities she films the rituals and dances. She studies the ancient ruins. She gets local musicians to create the music. She finds the best painters to do the backdrops."

"There were dance companies that were doing folk dance before (Hernandez), but she created the idea of training the dancers in classical dance techniques first, exposing them to modern techniques and then exposing them to regional rituals and dances."

The Ballet Folklorico also reaches out to children through the Children's Cultural Education Fund, a non-profit organization founded in 1991 by Hernandez and Columba Bush, former President George Bush's Mexican-born daughter-in-law.

Aimed at introducing schoolchildren to Mexico's rich culture and history, the project reaches up to 30,000 American students each year with free performances and study guide materials in classrooms.

For her part, Hernandez says her legacy will continue through her two daughters. The younger one dances, while the older one trains the company's dancers and supervises the artistic work.

And the audiences, no doubt, will always be around.

"Dance is a language that everybody understands," Hernandez says. "Dancing and singing and playing music is a need of human beings."

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The Ballet Folklorico de Mexico will perform at 8 p.m. Friday, 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. Saturday and at 3 p.m. on Sunday. Tickets may be purchased at the Auditorium Theatre box office, 50 E. Congress Pkwy., or at all Ticketmaster locations, by calling Ticketmaster at 312-902-1500 or on-line at www.ticketmaster.com.